flip a coin, any coin
by Aliathe
Summary: The boy with hair like the fire around him falls unconscious before he can see the man's smile. [vignettes] [shirou-centric]


**Summary:**

 _The boy with hair like the fire around him falls unconscious before he can see the man's smile. [vignettes] [first chapter: preview summation] [shirou-centric]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own any of the TYPE-MOON properties, or the cover picture._

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 **preview: snaps of time and space**

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Heat that had long ago ceased being heat billowed under his feet. Light that had long ago ceased being light blossomed by his sides.

Fire that never ever had or would or will cease being fire enveloped his body.

 _"-nyone!? Ple-"_

Noise outside of the smog and screams came distantly, in crackling spurts. He vaguely recalled something that produced similar noise; 'broken telephone,' his implicit memory offered, or, by the repetitiveness, 'broken recorder.

And it _was_ repetitive.

 _"-there!? Anyone!? Please, is anyone there!?"_

There was no need to go towards the noise, because he did not desire to be saved.

There was no need to turn away from the noise, because he did not desire to die.

So he . . . walked on.

The noise came closer, increasingly . . . 'hysterical,' prompted his implicit memory once more.

 _"An-anyone!? Please . . . anyone . . . ?"_

Feeling . . . 'tired,' he stumbled, and scraped his knees and instinctively flung arms, stabbing them bloody raw with burnt rubble to match the bleeding-burning gash in his head.

It was a numbed wound, numbed like everything else, though he could almost feel more explicit memories trickle away with each trickle of wet redness.

He didn't get up, _because there was no need, because he did not desire to._

 _"-ease . . . please . . ."_

A man stepped out of the [heat (?)] [light (?)] _fire_ , stopping still when he saw him kneeling motionlessly on the cracked ground, hands spread flat on the jagged edges.

He didn't lift his head, just glanced sideways, catching a glimpse of an utterly blank look on the man's face.

The boy with hair like the fire around him falls unconscious, collapsing limply among ash and dirt and cursed uncaring ground, before he can see the man's grateful smile.

.

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Shirou sat and patiently meditated.

He was good at being patient, since 'impatience' implied desire or disgust, and he had nothing nor nobody to particularly desire or despise.

An empty existence, maybe.

But then again, he was an empty child.

.

.

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He assumed the reason he'd lived past The Fire was because he'd been meant to.

That didn't necessarily mean he was meant to live past anything else, or, in that case, that he necessarily believed in any 'destiny' or 'fate.'

And Shirou was aware of those thoughts as well.

. . . yet, Death wasn't something that really inspired any significantly intense feeling in him.

By now, he just tried his dutiful best to stay alive, more out of habit impressed upon him by Kiritsugu and obligation _to_ Kiritsugu, than out of one particular desire to live.

.

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Logically, she knew very well that it was just the half-mast of his lids and the tilt of his dipped head that blocked light from reflecting off his irises, but Emiya's dull, _dead_ eyes have always unnerved Rin to an extent she'd never willingly admit.

A magus was supposed to walk with death, yes, and she believed strongly in that time-honored motto.

 _Just . . ._

Emiya Shirou looked and acted like he'd _already_ taken a walk with death.

And had not found it to be of any certain interest.

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An Emiya Shirou who doesn't have an interest in the concept of saving or heroism?

Archer scoffed bitterly to himself, swiping a hand at his own face to rake back already-combed hair.

This had better be a fucking joke, or else his one-in-a-million chance was gone.

. . . but then again, he'd live for _an_ eternity, if not _all_ eternity.

There were trillions of billions of millions of chances to wait for.

He sighed, heavily, through his nose.

Archer didn't _want_ to wait another eternity of slaughter, _damnit-!_

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"What do you want to see the fake priest for?" Tohsaka asked, nose wrinkled in clear dislike for her guardian, and clear suspicion for the classmate in front of her.

Shirou shrugged, a simple, efficient, up-down twitch.

"My father told me to not become Kotomine Kirei, or end up like him. The best way to do that is to meet Kotomine Kirei, then, so I know what not to become, or what not to end up like."

". . . don't you mean 'who'?" she corrected, slowly and grudgingly relaxing her suspicion.

He smiled blandly; all of his expressions were bland.

"No."

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Sempai didn't need cheerfulness or innocent smiles.

He didn't need much or anything or anybody, actually, but he'd commented before on the difficulty he experienced when trying to interpret positive or negative emotions.

"There are many variations and ways of reading every word, every tonal inflection, every body gesture and facial tic," he'd noted, carefully sighting another fletched arrow, certain to be a bulls-eye. "I sometimes wonder why I try to keep learning."

Sakura listened just as carefully to every remark Sempai said, however, and from there on out resolved herself to be as cool and calm as Sempai was.

Perhaps he'd find a kinship between them . . . ?

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Kirei can recognize a fellow kinsmen when he sees one.

Or, at the very least, a close approximate to one.

In the church foyer, a no-longer empty man smiles amusedly at the empty child, who stares dully back.

 _'What an interesting piece to come into play . . .'_

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A chilling trill never failed to zing down his spine whenever he met the boy he'd saved's eyes.

They were blank and indifferent, reminding him of that thrice-damned ex-Executioner still lurking in the Fuyuki church.

But the boy, Shirou, was better and worse at the same time.

He was a perfectly blank slate, a computer wiped clean and ready from programming.

Habits were easily accepted and taught, though he could tell, just from those unchanging eyes, that none of the morality and harmless ideals like 'justice' and 'freedom' he tried to instill were ever truly absorbed.

Shirou was quiet, and amnesiac, and needed to have much of his factual memories and all of his personal memories replaced.

As if to compensate for all of that, he learned quickly, copying Kiritsugu's actions silently until he otherwise corrected or rejected them, reading everything he could get his hands on as soon as he painstakingly relearned the gaps in his katakana and mathematics, building on and improvising from the knowledge he read.

He had no explanations, no justifications, no reasoning to make sense of why he'd been in the fire, why he'd been alive long enough to be saved, why he'd been saved at all, why he was now living.

So he demanded explanations and justifications and reasonings to make everything make sense before he accepted them.

 _"What is justice, Otou-san? What is freedom? Why do we believe in these things, and how do we know they are true? Why are people good and bad? Why should I bee good and bad? Who am I?"_

The last matter, the matter of personal identity, probably was the worst question Shirou sought an answer to.

Because as far as Kiritsugu could tell, Shirou had none.

He called himself 'white,' after the medical tent's ceiling he'd first seen upon waking.

But even though he would answer to 'Shirou,' and thereafter call himself 'Emiya Shirou,' that was always done detachedly, like some convenient label substituting until a real nametag could be found.

A personal identity was a person's hopes, dreams, fears, dislikes. It was their memories in their critically important developmental age of youth that shaped who they were, who they wanted to be, and what ultimately propelled them to continue to live, or decide not to.

Shirou had none of those personal memories, and whatever identity he had before the fire, had been wiped out by the severe concussion incurred during the fire.

If anything, the fire had been the cumulative sum of all of his developmental memories, and that was . . . not a very good thing to draw identity and purpose from.

Thankfully, Shirou showed no joy from destruction or despair, but that in and of itself was somehow worse than Kirei, who'd at least showed genuine strong emotion, though it'd been a sadistic and depraved one.

He, on the other hand, was seemingly just completely uncaring, startling in the inhuman emptiness of it all.

The boy . . . and the computer made the best comparison.

Both could learn, both could adapt, both could advance and develop habits from observing others.

And both had no faith, no desire, and ultimately no purpose, save for what those influencing and constructing them gave.

Can an AI, in time, understand and feel emotion as well? Can an empty child be moral, or find a personal meaning in concepts like 'justice' and 'freedom'?

Kiritsugu wasn't sure, but he'd already saved Shirou in body, and he was determined to do _something_ right in his pitiful life and save Shirou in _mind, heart, spirit,_ too.

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He counted it as a win, or at the very least a promising draw, when he could look Shirou in the eyes and return his smile genuinely without noticing anything overtly wrong about Shirou's expression.

If nothing else, Kiritsugu thought, he could rest in peace knowing he'd managed to teach Shirou how to fake normality better, and had set him firmly on a hopefully peaceful path to finding his purpose, as well as negotiating a promise out of him to actively try to stay alive.

The Magus Killer could breathe out one last shuddering sigh, now, and blink out of this world between glances at the moon.

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.

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Shirou clinically checked for a pulse, then found none, after a second carefully moving his adoptive father into a flat-backed lying position that would fit on their backyard porch.

He finished his tea.

It was, by the standards of society, pretty good tea.

Practically, he finished his father's tea as well.

He'd never understood his liking for tea and midnight moon-viewings, but it was considered 'kind' to accommodate the preferences of those near-death, and his clearly-terminally-ill guardian had reiterated the importance of 'kindness' to him many times over.

Not feeling anything, he stared at the moon for a few minutes.

. . . he still didn't understand the appeal.

That was okay; he didn't understand the appeal of many things.

Shirou moved inside the warmer house, and dialed the number of the funeral house his father had prepared arrangements with.

Kiritsugu always did seem to have his affairs in order.


End file.
